Eye Catcher: Hidden
Description: The third book in the acclaimed John Newcastle series. There is an excerpt on the inside cover. Rarity: 110 Uses: Book Restocks at: Does not Restock Notes: This item can be obtained by opening an August 2011 Collection. Inside this book you can read the story of John Newcastle. Inside Story Comparing the warehouses near the river to ruins wasn't as much of an exaggeration as John thought. In a trendier city, they might have been converted to lofts long ago, but in this particular city, they had been left to rot. Some of the doors, in fact, had rotted off the hinges, and so it didn't take a lot of effort for John to shoulder them open. In some, he found musty piles of textiles that had never made it to sale, but in most he found rats. He was midway down the row of forgotten buildings, when he met a door that wouldn't budge. Though its hinges and locks were as rusted as the rest in the row, the wood had no give to it, and even when attempting to dramatically kick in the door, all John succeeded in doing was hurting his foot. He certainly couldn't leave it unexplored, that was for sure. The more considered the building, the more odd it seemed. Limping into a narrow passage between two warehouses, he looked for a window. There were several, but they were all much to high on the wall, and so he continued around to the back of the building, where there was a parking lot full of weeds, and a small back door with a window beside it. It would have been far to lucky for the door to be unlocked, but John tried it anyway, and found that it was indeed locked. Peering through the window, it seemed to look into a small office, a calendar from several years before long abandoned on the wall. what lay in the rest of the warehouse could not be seen. His foot still throbbing from his attempted forced entry on the front door, John decided that perhaps the simpler approach was best. There was no shortage of rocks or heaved bits of concrete in the parking lot, and so he took one and sent it through the window, reaching through to unlock the door. Entering, the building smelled like dust and mildew, and as his eyes adjusted, John saw that the picture inside the warehouse was odder than he could have imagined. It was packed full of things, and things was about the best way they could be described; He saw several bent bicycle frames, a dining room set, a broken rocking chair, and more piles of boxes and newspapers than one could hope to count in a lifetime, never mind at at glance. The further he explored, the more obvious it became that the stacks of junk were arranged into pathways, and hidden in the gloom somewhere, John swore he could hear voices. It was not the first time John wished that he carried a gun, and it certainly wouldn't be the last, and so while he slowly made it way toward the voices, he pondered his life choices and looked through the junk for something that would at least leave a bruise. He found a bat once, and then later some kind of pipe, but both were so hopelessly lodged in their respective junk piles that it would have been impossible to remove them without making a racket. The muffled voices were just beyond a few twists and turns now, and so John practiced making fists, suddenly self-conscious about how he held his thumb when he did so. The voices grew louder, and John came to what he could only assume was the final corner. He peeked around it gingerly, and found what awaited him even more bizarre than the piles of junk. It was a makeshift sitting room, with a sofa, a chair, and a small sideboard with an old-fashioned radio reciting the news. He saw no one. At least, he saw no one until he felt a sharp burst of pain in the side of his head and went reeling to the floor. It was a small man with bright red eyes, in his hands some sort of fire poker. He swung again, this time catching John in the arm as he raised it to protect himself. Now his arm and his head were aching, as well as his stupidly injured foot, and the sound of his heartbeat pounding in his ears nearly blocked out another voice yelling. As the small man brought the poker down for another swing, another man, an oddly familiar man broke into John's field of vision, catching the blow awkwardly. "Wait!" he was yelling, and even more frantically "He's bleeding!". John barely had time to recognize the man's face before his world started to go black- it was Lyle Lovell. Category:Books Category:Donation Item Category:R110